2013 Presentations (Communicative Events)

Culture, Democracy, and Spectacle in Early Twentieth Century Argentina

Montaldo, Graciela Raquel

Jacques Rancière argues in Le Spectateur Emancipe, that the emancipation is the alteration of the boundary between the people-who-act and the people who watch the others, between individuals and members of a collective body. But the weakening of this boundary does not necessarily entail political emancipation; it can instead cause a rearrangement whereby culture turns massive and loses its aura. No just an imaginary, institutional, or sociological place, culture becomes also a space of performance in the era of democracy. I would like to explore here how lettered culture developed the “live” experience, through public shows and exhibitions that articulated the sophisticated world of culture for the masses in early twentieth century Argentina. Writers emerged to address the public, experiment with new processes, and become spectacle.